The Rules Do Not Apply
CBC Books | CBC | Posted: February 14, 2017 6:35 PM | Last Updated: December 21, 2017
Ariel Levy
As a young woman Levy decided that to be a writer would be like being a professional explorer; she'd be free to do and travel anywhere she chose. When, as a 38-year-old working journalist, she left for a reporting trip to Mongolia, she thought she had figured out her life: she was married, pregnant, financially secure and successful on her own terms. A month later, none of that was true.
In gorgeous, moving, sharp, unforgettable prose, Levy describes her own ill-fated assumptions: thinking that anything is possible, that the old rules do not apply, that marriage doesn't have to mean monogamy, that aging doesn't have to mean infertility. In telling her own searing story, Levy has captured a portrait of our time, of the shifting forces in American culture, of what has changed and what has remained. And of how to begin again. (From Random House)
From the book
I wanted what we all want: everything. We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic, surprising. We want to be youthful adventurers and middle-aged mothers. We want intimacy and autonomy, safety and stimulation, reassurance and novelty, coziness and thrills. But we can't have it all.
From The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy ©2017. Published by Random House.